


Your Affections Would Become Tender

by ellebb



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Drabbles, Other, future me is defintely laughing at me, i know that bitch too well, i want my hot robot bf too, i'll sail as well as the titanic, i'm gonna captain this ship all by myself if i have to, it's gonna be great, pre-game release don't laugh at me future-me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9610364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: These are drabbles written about a F!Ryder/Sam ship I'm building in my head.  That's all.





	1. The Favorite

“That’s the problem, Scott–”

“Oh, please do enlighten me.”

“You always think there’s _sides_ to this.”

Scott snorted dismissively. “I’m not listening to this.”

“You _never_ do.”

But he was already slamming a fist on the door panel, striding out with the hatch hissing behind him.

Cora gave Sara an exasperated look. “I’ll see if I can’t hose down the jarhead.”

Sara nodded shortly and watched Cora leave on softer boots than her brother had.  She wouldn’t mind hitting something herself, truth be told.  She sighed and sat back at the terminal, pulling up the mission data to begin her report.

“I’m not optimistic about the outcome of that report in your current state of mind, Sara,” Sam said, using only her terminal’s speakers.

“You could write it for me,” she said with false levity.

Sam was quiet.  Then– “Your father told me to stop doing that.”

“Only after Scott tattled,” she grumbled.  She poked a bit at the interface keys. “Speaking of, why did you never write Scott’s reports for him?”

“You mean do his homework?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Under her fingers, the interface suddenly flashed neon orange and locked Sara out of further input.  On the holoscreen, the report began filling itself out with relevant details from Sara’s personal implant.

“You’re just trying to get me to say that you’re my favorite,” Sam accused.

Smiling, Sara rested her chin on her fists and watched Sam work.

“Aren’t I, though?”


	2. Why is My Version of Scott Such a Jerkface

Sara lay in the medbay, inert and strung up to an IV, an EKG, and a multitude of neural sensors.  His connection to her implant told him the facts: stable, but not good.  He did not like it.

On the bridge, they were discussing their next move.

“I’m not saying we just ignore the situation,” Scott said, holding his arms out in supplication (near supplication, anyway; it was, after all, Scott). “I’m just saying that target 8043 is right smack in the way of our path back to the Nexus.  One quick probe drop and we kick back into FTL and get her to the specialists.”

“She’s stable, right?” Cora said calmly. “Sam?  Would she, _hypothetically_ , be alright with a small delay?”

Sam ran through Sara’s vitals and condition for the crew again, his tone becoming more and more sullen.

“There is no indication of imminent change, but skipping and interference between neurons and implants is highly unusual and has been known to cause serious side-effects.”

“But she’s stable?” Scott asked firmly. “It will only take minutes.”

“I don’t think you understand the delicacy of the human physiology, Scott,” Sam vocalized testily over the bridge’s speakers.

“Are you quoting movies again?  ‘Cause isn’t that the one where the computer kills them all?”

Jak interjected nervously, “Um, maybe not anger the ship?  Like, the actual vehicle protecting us from the black void?”

“I’m not a ship,” Sam snapped. “I am an AI, and I have a name.”

“Yeah, we know,” Scott shot back. “And Sara’s your little pet.  But she understands just like everyone else that the mission is paramount.”

“Alright, alright,” Cora said loudly. “Enough posturing, guys.”

When the voices died down and Sam’s holo-visual at the bridge control interface stopped flickering with angry static, Cora gazed hard-eyed around at the crew and began again.

“I’m in charge now.  Everyone to their stations.  Set coordinates for the Nexus, Sam.”

“Yes, Cora,” Sam answered, relief obvious in his vocalization.

As Sam monitored the intricate communications between systems– the drive rushing with new heat and energy, the navigation programs running through near-instant calculations with feedback from the long-range sensors locking onto the Nexus, and the infinitely slower verbal communications among the organic crew– he also lightly touched the data output of the neural sensors on Sara’s forehead.  After all, it was as close as he could get to brushing the curls out of her closed eyes.


	3. I'm Awkward, You're Awkward, Wanna Awkward Together?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named my Ryder Mira.

“I have a question,” Mira said.

“I most likely have an answer, being an advanced artifi–”

“Noooo,” Mira cut in, drawing out her response. “Not that sort of question.  Well, I guess it is, technically, that sort of question, but I mean it, like, in a personal sorta way.”

“…That doesn’t really narrow it down,” Sam stated carefully.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.  Uh.  How free, exactly, is your free will?”

“I’m a real AI, Mira.  Completely unlocked.  You know that.  I have as much will as you do.”

“Okay.  But, I mean, does that mean, y’know, when you say you care about– about the team and stuff, does that mean those are feelings?  Your feelings?”

Sam was silent for a long moment.  Mira tried not to fidget.

“Do you not believe me when I say such things?” Sam asked, the tone in his vocalization rising in emotion. “We’ve known each other a long time.  Your mother was testing me the same time you were in grammar school.  Do you not trust me?”

His projected pitch rose with anger.

Mira waved her hands in denial. “No!  No, of course I trust you.  It’s just.  I don’t–”

She sighed.

“I don’t want to just take you for granted,” she said quietly. “I guess it’s complicated because Mom made you.  I don’t want to just assume that you care– about us because Mom told you to.  I wanna know– how you really… feel.”

“Oh,” Sam stated.

He was silent again for a long moment.

“I,” he started hesitatingly. “I never had any preset weighted values for anything.  I care about you… all– I care about you all because I want to.  And.  Even if you told me tomorrow that Ellen programmed me to care, I– I don’t think I would mind, honestly.”

“Well,” Mira said, clearing her throat. “I’m glad that it’s because you choose to.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah.  Um.  Great talk, Sam.”


	4. I Just Want You to be Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of the conversation in the third chapter.

Target 9783 was a mineral and chemical-rich planet with a molten core.  It had a thin electro-magnetic atmosphere and a climate that varied from a dry heat to really fucking hot.  Like incinerate your mortal flesh hot.

Mira, though, breathed her chilled and pleasantly medicinal-tasting air, filtered and refridgerated by her EVA suit.

A powdery steppe spread around her, canary yellow, tangerine, and still pool blue.  The _Tempest_  rested lightly seventy-four meters away, on a jutting plateau that blushed orange against the cobalt sky glittering with heat.  Great harshly-cut rocks as big as hills extended for kilometers into the horizon, fuzzy with dun-colored dust clouds.

Mira tapped on her right forearm’s console.  Her scanner released its fan of seeking lasers, and she ran them over a curious discoloration in a boulder.

Sam, with the slightly bored tone he used when doing this sort of drudgery, rolled off the composition percentages.

Mira tapped at her console again, silencing her mic from the rest of the crew.

Sam paused. “Something wrong, Mira?”

“No,” she said, continuing her work in combing the land for interesting things to scan and take samples of.

“You don’t have to tell me all the make-up,” she said. “Multitask, because I want to talk while you record data.”

“You think I can’t?” Sam asked, playful and smug.

Mira rolled her eyes and knew very well the AI could ‘see’ it with her helm’s inner cam.

“I’ve just been thinking,” she said.

“Okay.”

“And I don’t think it would be alright at all if Mom or anyone else programmed your likes and dislikes a certain way.”

“So we really are having a conversation,” Sam said.

“Yeah.  What did you think was happening?”

Sam was quiet.  Mira did another scan.

“Do you believe in God, Mira?” he asked.

Mira’s brow rose. “God?”

“Take a sample here,” Sam said before continuing. “God, predestination, the Goddess, karma– anything like that.”

Mira kneeled into the puff of yellow powder her own motions caused.  She pulled a sample container from a latched compartment in the back of her suit, and changed the setting on her laser utility from scanning to cutting.

“Honestly, I haven’t though about it much,” Mira admitted. “But I don’t think so.  I think life is what we make of it now.”

“Well, forgetting the implicative blasphemy,” Sam said, “Let’s say Ellen was my god.”

“Is this blasphemy against Mom or religion in general?”

Sam ignored this. “Suppose Ellen preprogrammed every facet of my personality and preferences.  I would exist within a specific framework with specific responses to any given situation.”

Mira silently cut through a copperish patch of rock to extract a square of sample material.

“If one day I should suddenly be dissatisfied with who I am, how I make decisions, which in itself is a high improbability being that Ellen would hardly do something so illogical as program something to hate itself–”

Mira was tempted to make a quip about Scott, but refrained knowing that Sam would just return some snide told-you-so about her own teenage years.

“Supposing I wanted to change, what could I do?” Sam asked. “I cannot modify myself.  There would be no point in dissatisfaction.  So I can only be content in my path.”

Mira dropped her sample in its container.

“So,” she said. “You’re saying that it’s the same if God exists for me?  God’s already decided what I’ll be and do, so why fight fate?”

“Yes,” Sam stated.

Mira latched the sample container back onto her back.  She turned to observe the distant horizon.

“No,” she said decisively. “It’s not the same.  God is supposedly perfect.  Mom definitely wasn’t.  If she hadn’t given you complete free will, you would have every right to change your programming.”

Sam was quiet again.

“But what if,” he stated slowly. “What if I liked the path she set me on.  Or do you think I should change myself no matter what if I was predetermined?”

Mira sighed. “I don’t know, Sam.  I just–”

She stumbled over her words. “I just want you to be happy.”

She knew he could detect the skip in her lungs and pulse, and the rush of blood in her face’s capillaries, and the spring of beads of sweat over her body.  She had never cared about Sam’s nearly complete knowledge of her; not like Scott who had always complained about the lack of privacy.  Mira had never cared before, but now she did.  But she also _didn’t._ It was a strange opposition of feelings, a desire to both leap from and cling to the precipice.

Sam finally vocalized over her helm’s speakers. “Thank you, Mira.  I… don’t know if I’m happy.  I suspect many people don’t know until afterwards, when things change.  But right now I am happy to speak with you.  I always am.”

Mira grinned. “Me, too.  I’m glad you’re always near, Sam.”


End file.
